The present invention relates generally to machines for maintaining lawns and landscaped areas and, more particularly, to an attachment for a commercial mower for maintaining a line of demarcation between lawn areas and mulched beds.
Many landscaped areas include plant beds, usually having a mulch spread over the ground around the plants, adjacent to grassed lawn areas. It is preferable to maintain these mulched beds with a line of demarcation relative to the grassed area by forming a shallow trench therebetween. Commercially, this trench is usually formed by hand, removing the soil to a remote location. This hand process is very time consuming and, therefore, costly.
A number of powered lawn edging attachments are known in the prior art, such as shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,537,244 issued to B. J. Hicks on Nov. 3, 1970; U.S. Pat. No. 4,002,205 issued to D. C. Falk on Jan. 11, 1977; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,200,155 issued to D. L. Mullet, et al on Apr. 29, 1980. These known powered lawn edging attachments cannot be operated to form the trenched demarcation line around intricate landscape lines in a rapid and cost effective manner, while discharging the soil therefrom into the mulched bed where it can be easily disposed of.
Commercial landscapers typically have lawn mowing machines utilizing a pair of driven wheels and at least one ground support wheel to support a frame over the surface of the ground to carry a mower deck for cutting the grassed areas. These commercial mowers are typically provided with a power-takeoff shaft which may be connected to various attachments that can be mounted to the mower frame. It would be desirable to provide an attachment that could be easily mounted to the frame of the commercial mower and connected to the power-takeoff shaft thereof to permit selective engagement with the ground to form a trenched line of demarcation between the landscaped lawn area and an adjacent mulched bed as the mower is driven on the grassed area next to the mulched bed.